And the Sensible Response is…

There is precedent for that, but I’ll admit it isn’t a frequent occurrence.

The last time must have been when I was about three. So I don’t remember much about it.

But I’ve heard stories.

Mostly from my mother. She was there.

In her story, I was nattering on about something arcane (arcane, at least, to a grown up.)

She never did say what I was on about. For all I know, I was theorizing about “Life, the Universe, and Everything” even back then.

My mother must have found my theories about as meaningful as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (in which, if you remember, the computer, “Deep Thought,” was asked to provide an answer for Life, the Universe and Everything and yielded an answer of “42.” More on that later…) At any rate, her motherly patience finally ran out.

“Dixie,” she said, (or at least this is what she says she said,) would you PLEASE say something sensible?”

According to her version of the story, I was quiet for some time.

Then, in a small voice, I said, “I love you Mommy, is that sensible?”

It makes a great punch line. For as long as I heard her tell that story, I’ve gotten teased about how, even as a baby, I knew how to wrap people around my little finger.

But I know me better now than I did then. And I think, just maybe, I gave it some “deep thought” and returned the only answer I could think of. The only sensible answer anyway.

Love, when it really IS love and not the things we often mistake for love, such as need, desire, security, ego, or other forms of attachment, is the purest, most transformative force we can access or encounter. Children know that.

Several decades later, I’m still contemplating Life, the Universe, and Everything.

I decided to be quiet until I had something sensible to say.

Here it is…

Sometimes love is the only sensible response.

Life happens. Return and reconnect to the heart of it.

Life changes. Hold tight to the love and release your expectations.

Life ends… No, truly it doesn’t. But because life as we know it can end - never miss a chance to speak your heart.

Even when you don’t understand the question.

Love is still the sensible response.

P.S. There is more to this thought. But it will have to wait until I sort it out.

P.P.S. Thank you to my friends and readers who have missed my voice and let me hear about it.

P.P.P.S. Yes, that somber tyke is/was me. Probably the only baby picture of me without a smile.

8 Comments

Tom Gillaspie on December 9, 2011 at 3:16 pm

What do you get when you multiply 6 by 9? Hey, I think you are right. The ultimate “answer” was always meant to be love:) Thanks for this post Dixie, as you probably know, the timing for me was perfect. Love you all ways.

Yup – the mice had it all wrong. But their second question might be relevant. More on that later. Remember how Mom used to tell this story? It only just occurred to me that she was missing the point. But somehow I think you got it the first time. You’re one of the reasons I figured it out.

“But because life as we know it can end – never miss a chance to speak your heart.”

Your entire post, Dixie, is wonderful, of course. But, for me, this sentence defines a mantra which has guided my life for the almost quarter-century since a 36-year-old journalist, whose words were the first thing I read in my local paper each day had his life here snuffed out in a freak automobile accident. His writing is among the strongest influencing mine yet today, yet I never took the time to tell him — to speak my heart.

You only make a mistake like that once, even knowing that “speaking our hearts” is not something most people do. It can, in fact, shock, embarrass, make people uncomfortable to have another say, “Hey, what you do matters. It’s touched my life. You matter to me.”

Wouldn’t this world be a better place if we could all express love that way?

Oh no, love is never an illusion. But don’t you think most people hear love and imagine they hear a subtext of all the things that the word can mean but never really is? It’s worth asking yourself – “what I am expressing exactly?” Because sometimes we realize it isn’t really love at all.

In the seat of Love I am You and You are me. WE Are All, IN the Now…Forever and Always. And as in your example with your Mother, “I Love You” is a Great Pattern Interrupt for most Any situation. I Love You. :^) [With those you can get close to a Touch at the same time has a Deeper effect on connecting ALL the Bodies of the Physical, (there are 4)- I Love You.]